The silver-plated dinner knife sliced through the flatbread. The sound of meat and plant fibers parting was almost negligible, but the clatter whenever the utensils struck the fine porcelain was irritating. Athena, renowned for her elegance, rarely made such crude clinking noises. Even the Emperor could tell that she was truly in a terrible mood. In the past, if he had behaved so rudely at the dining table as a child, he would certainly have earned a torrent of scolding.
The future did not look promising, and the Emperor did not know what plans Athena had made for his future. What was certain was that the future she had foreseen differed greatly from those plans. Though he had always known that his adoptive mother had her own schemes, he also knew Athena was telling the truth. She truly cared about him. He could taste the genuine emotions in the Aether ripples stirred by Athena's feelings, like a snake flicking out its tongue to catch scent molecules. Perhaps it was the affection born from their long years together, or perhaps she had given herself over to despair after her plans had come to nothing, but Athena had begun guiding him in another direction.
The noise stopped, and everything around them became utterly silent. Even the faint sounds outside the apartment, all that remained after passing through the double-glazed soundproof windows, vanished. The Emperor felt a gentle, radiant consciousness enter his mind, softly parting the mental defenses he had meticulously designed on paper and reinforced layer by layer before setting foot upon the Path of Arcane. He closed his eyes and cooperatively unraveled the false-memory illusion formed by the maze within his surface consciousness and its countless spells, drawing it into his embrace.
He ignored the chill wind scraping across his skin